Spritely Incidents
by TheGreatSalmon
Summary: President Shinra had always believed in ghosts – that is, the spirits of dead people. Until one day, when he saw the "ghost" of a man standing right beside him…((rating may increase, new characters will appear in later chapters!))
1. Chapter 1

**Author note: Hi, this is TheGreatSalmon! With what will hopefully be my first multi-chaptered story on this site. If I don't update often, don't be too hard on meee :(**

**Anyway, enjoy (or try?), and I promise the "humour" element will pick up in subsequent chapters!**

Another day with the Shinra company, another mundane mission for 2nd class SOLDIER Zack Fair.

The young man stretched expansively, daydreaming about anything and everything else he could be doing on such a great day. Beautiful, even. The sun was high in a cloudless-blue sky, its rays streaming down to the soft plains of flowering grasses below. But despite their riot of colours, Zack would easily have traded in the flowers for a nice beach. Their pollen was making his nose itch, though that was nothing compared to the sweaty itching of the woollen SOLDIER top that would lie discarded and forgotten at the first sign of even the smallest pool of water.

His sole companion, the Turk Tseng, eyed him suspiciously. It would have been obvious even to someone without his years of training in noticing every tiny detail of his surroundings that the young SOLDIER was distracted. His sky-blue eyes darted up and down, left and right – and it was clear that their mission was the furthest thing from his mind.

"Zack," the Turk said softly, "what would you do if we were attacked right now?"

Zack spun on his heel and continued his trek backwards, head resting against the palms of his interlaced hands. "Huh?" was his reply. "Sorry, I wasn't listening."

Tseng sighed, and not for the first time in the past couple of hours. He didn't even dignify the boy's apology with a response.

And so the pair continued in relative silence, broken only by their footfalls, (Tseng's quick and precise, Zack's irregular and heavy enough to wake the dead), and Zack's occasional humming or sudden noise of understanding, as if every waking moment were a revelation to him. _Then again, _thought Tseng, _if they say, 'simple things amuse simple minds', that may not be too far from the truth_. He wondered further to himself why it had been Zack who had been assigned to bodyguard him, and it was obvious that Zack wondered the same thing, as he had apparently put such doubts to his mentor, Angeal. Surely the army's most honourable and diligent 1st class SOLDIER would have seen sense if there was any to see, and yet here they were regardless. Even though both Tseng and Zack knew that the highly-regarded Turk would be perfectly safe by himself, and though powerful, Zack's careless nature almost warranted him protection of his own.

But this debacle wasn't Angeal's fault. Not even such a treasured member of Shinra staff could talk sense into the president while he was curled under his desk in the foetal position. Tseng couldn't really blame him after what the man had apparently seen, although he could attest that the Turks sometimes dealt with even stranger sounding occurrences – that always resolved into something understandable. So he knew from experience – they would find the house of the "mystic" who lived in Kalm, they would sit down to tea with her and she would laugh and tell them that really she was just in it for the money and only _pretended_ to be a clairvoyant, and they could all just get back to business. With the world's largest energy company in the hands of a young man barely old enough to be counted as such, and its current leader locked safely away in a padded cell…

Tseng's train of thought was brought to an abrupt halt as he ran up against something hard. It wasn't in his nature to not pay attention like that, but what was worse than temporarily compromising his dignity in his own company was that Zack – AKA head blabbermouth of the Shinra building, had not only seen him do it, but actually _been_ the thing he had run into. The SOLDIER turned around slowly, replacing a muscled back with an equally muscled front in Tseng's view.

"What's wrong?" Tseng asked, his tone turning worriedly hurt towards the end of his question. Zack's face broke into his trademarked grin. "I was just seeing if you were paying attention!"

Tseng hmph-ed, when internally he was quite surprised at the boy's wit. It was something that he had not expected given certain…reports of his training progress in anything that wasn't physical. "I think this would be a good place to rest," Tseng mumbled.

This suggestion was met by a groan of frustration from Zack. "But if we rest now, we won't be back by dark. I can see in the dark with my mako-eyes, but you can't, and besides Angeal will get worried."

Tseng cocked an eyebrow.

"Well," Zack huffed, the slightest tinge of pink colouring his cheeks, "what I mean is I shouldn't have worried about leaving my parents behind when I came to Midgar. Angeal is good for about three."

This time his comment was met with a rueful nod from the Turk. "You're right. We need to make up for the time we lost when the truck broke down."

Zack, seeing this as a sign that for once he had proven right, grinned again and resumed following the narrow stretch of dirt road that meandered its way through the grass plains and chocobo farms that the countryside between Midgar and Kalm was famous for. God only knew why Tseng had entrusted the map to Zack. In his defence, he really had no way of knowing that the teen would mistake the labels of "shortcut" and "scenic route", but still. He should have seen something like this coming, though none of this seemed to phase the bubble 2nd-classer one bit.

The lack of conversation didn't really affect either man in a bad way, but after several more minutes of trudging their way along, Tseng started to feel uneasy. He couldn't claim to have seen the strange spectre that had sent President Shinra into such fits of terror that he could barely speak, but he had been in the room with him when the supposed incident happened. He had _been the subject_ of the supposed incident, which he figured to be a deciding factor, along with his skill as a "collector of information", as some of the Turks liked to be known in more sensitive circles, in his being chosen to lead investigations into the matter. It was a strange feeling, considering, even for a moment, (Tseng would never admit even to himself that he believed in anything vaguely supernatural), that his own spirit, soul, a ghost, whatever people wanted to call it could be wandering the great wide world of its own free will. Even so, the first-class Shinra spy was determined to set the record straight, to prove once and for all that there was no "mystery" too strange to have the cover pulled off it by the Turks to expose the bare bones of the truth beneath.

Until something inexplicably cold and damp smashed into the back of his head.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author note: Hey again, more from TheGreatSalmon. Soooo, yeah this ended up being a bit fluffy…purely friendship fluff, I swear! *sweats nervously* If this is the entrée, the meat of the plot is due to be served soon. So if you can put up with my filling drabblings, enjoy! (And please review with whatever you feel like saying!)**

Chapter 2 – On My Honour

Zack should have been back by now. He should have been back by now. _He should have been back by now_.

Unknown to the young 2nd class SOLDIER in question, the assumptions made about his often-mentor's mental state should he not be back precisely on time, were correct.

Angeal had ceased his backwards-and-forwards pacing after about thirty seconds, feeling ridiculous that it showed exactly how worried he was about Zack, and attempted to reason with himself. Indeed, the boy was late – but that had happened plenty of times before, to training sessions and missions alike. It wasn't that Zack was sloppy with his timing, (at least, no more than the majority of people), but there was always some excuse, (the most ludicrous but yet somehow most believable to date being, "I accidentally trapped a cactuar in a microwave with a plate of sausages and got arrested by animal welfare").

But Angeal couldn't remember the last time his young charge had gone on a mission without him, and that one thought pushed him back to the brink of pacing, which he would have given in to and resumed had there not been a hasty knock on his apartment door.

When he opened it, he did not recognise the man on the other side, but his attire screamed "Turk".

"SOLDIER 1st class, Angeal?" the anonymous young man stuttered out formally, his nerves obviously warring with a desperate desire to look professional. Angeal smiled warmly, finding this to be a useful tactic in getting people to relax around him. Small gestures like this were often necessary, from a man who though friendly and good-natured, tended to unintentionally intimidate people with both his appearance and rank (often making welcoming new recruits, an act that fell to Angeal from the lofty shoulders of fellow 1st classers Sephiroth and Genesis, quite the experience).

The young Turk took this gesture as his cue to continue, and produced a thin manila envelope from a sack perched on a small metal trolley just beside him. Delivering official documents from the Shinra Company was a task often assigned to new recruits of its "Research and Development" sector. The man handed the document over slowly, his hand wavering only the slightest bit as Angeal's own gloved fingers grasped the proffered edge.

"Thankyou," he said simply, smiling once again.

The rookie Turk remained, for the most part, emotionless – conceding only a quick dip of the head and a slight upwards twitch of the lips. But as he hurried away, obviously relieved to have his high-profile celebrity encounter over with, Angeal called after him, "the mail's an important job, and you're doing well."

The young man slowed his pace slightly, turned back, and grinned, before rounding a corner and disappearing out of sight.

Satisfied with his good deed for the day, Angeal turned his attention to the envelope that was still clutched, slightly too hard, in his hand. It was obvious to him after all his time serving in Shinra's armed forces that what he held was a mission request, probably straight from the president himself since there was no obvious involvement of director Lazard as the middle-man. The appearance of such a document in his current frame of mind caused Angeal's heart to sink several metaphorical inches in his chest. Though it could be anything, a sneaking suspicion lead him to believe it was something to do with Zack, even when what rational parts of his brain hadn't been taken over completely by his worries told him that such thoughts were ridiculous.

After a strained few seconds of contemplation, Angeal retreated with the envelope to the coffee table that had been his seat moments before the interruption. Its flap opened easily, being secured only by a single piece of tape, and the one piece of paper contained within slid out even more easily, shooting its way off the edge of the glass-topped table with a palpable glee. Angeal shook his head, and sighed. Personifying inanimate objects always lead to this kind of strife; just ask his favourite coffee mug that would practically scream in fear every morning as it hurled itself off the hook that was its home and towards the china-shattering metal of the sink below. And every morning it would be caught by its shining hero, Angeal. Every morning so far.

But this was no time to be thinking about such trivial things, Angeal reminded himself, as Zack's fate lay, contained in writing, on that lone leaf of paper. He made his way over to the thin, white rectangle that had landed mercifully face-down, and, kneeling awkwardly on the thin carpet, slowly, painstakingly, turned in over.

The words on the other side were brief, and confirmed Angeal's suspicions, but not his fears. For the letter was to do with Zack, but there were no mentions of injury. It _was_ mission, but not _for _Zack – with him, to rescue the apparently now-missing Turk who had originally accompanied the young SOLDIER. Relief gushed from Angeal's every pore, quickly followed by guilt – there was still someone in trouble, even if that someone was not quite as dear to him as the other possibility.

_Duty first, thrice-damned sentimentality later, with no one around to see its wound to my honour_, Angeal thought to himself, stretching as he stood. He fetched his sword from where it leant in a feigned-casual manner against one wall, secured it to his back, and was ready, (In order to put forth an image of organization and brutal efficiency, Angeal kept himself ever ready for action – sometimes going as far as to sleep in his boots).

He made his way to Lazard's office on the SOLDIER floor of the Shinra building for a full mission briefing.

"Zack," he said simply, upon catching sight of the teen for the first time since his gone-awry mission. A small smile was the only sign that Angeal was happy to see the young SOLDIER back. Zack grinned in return, and leapt the distance between them in a single bound. "Angeal!" he crowed, reaching up to ruffle the man's hair.

The 1st class SOLDIER stepped stiffly out of range of Zack's affections, chuckling lightly. The boy pouted. "Wow, you could be more happy to see me!"

Angeal's smile widened ever so slightly.

_I couldn't if I tried. _


End file.
